I have written several times on the topic of Say's Law. It is a topic many find boring, and others find pointless, but one I find fascinating, mostly because it serves to debunk so many economic myths. However, unlike my prior arguments, I think I am going to follow a pattern I have adopted in recent posts and, rather than offering a more formal economic analysis, I want to approach Say's Law from a very basic set of assumptions. That is, instead of dealing with formal economic theory, or other abstractions, as in "The Sky's Not Falling Part 2", I am going to look at what work is, why we work, what consumption is, why we consume and, most importantly, how we establish a balance between consumption and labor. And, having done all that, hopefully we will be in a position to apply this very basic understanding to more complex circumstances, allowing us to quickly see through the sophistry of many protectionist arguments, as well as many justifications for government regulation of commerce, production and consumption. Not to mention justification for the many intrusions into the labor market.

The most basic fact of life is that we have needs. Not just wants, but actual needs, at least provided we wish to continue to live*. Without food and water, and in most cases some form of shelter and clothing, we will not exist. And so the questions here are easy to answer. We work because if we did not consume we would not live, and we cannot consume without producing. So we produce to consume and consume to live. It is very simple.

But we then get into the area of less pressing needs, which gradually blend into wants, those things not absolutely essential to survival**. But still, the logic here is obvious to everyone I have ever asked. Because we have desires, we want slightly more comfortable clothes, better food, a roomier hut, shoes to protect our feet, and so on, we decide to consume goods, and we cannot consume until we produce them.And we will continue to produce goods so long as the effort that they take to produce is less onerous than the good is beneficial. In other words, our first hat may be worth quite some effort in order to shield us from sun and rain, but the fifth hat would have to be very easy to make to justify the effort. Still, the basic point is that we produce in order to consume. We are first consumers, only second producers, as consumption is an end in itself, while labor is the means to an end.

Let us look at it in very simple terms. Work is always a burden, that is why we call it work. if we enjoyed it, we would call it play or a hobby***. Similarly, consumption is always either enjoyable or beneficial. Not all of it is beneficial, of course. For example, consuming an emetic is not pleasant, but if it is needed the benefit, and the after effects are pleasant when compared to the alternative, so even if the actual consumption is not enjoyable, overall there is a net benefit and increase in satisfaction. Which, again, shows the basic nature of the two. Work is a cost, consumption is a boon. Labor is a means to consumption, consumption is not a means to labor.

Why do I keep mentioning this? Because, while self-evident, this simple fact is often overlooked by those who argue against the free market, especially by protectionists and labor activists, but at times by almost every variety of interventionists, and sometimes even by non-interventionist groups such as the FairTax advocates, who really should know better. At some point all of them seem to suggest that labor is somehow an end, that consumption is somehow "unworthy",and from these thoughts the most bizarre and dangerous theories flow. And so, to help prevent such confusion, I will return to my original topic, as I feel we need to repeat this over and over again, at least until the public begins to understand that labor, as labor, is not an end in itself.

Perhaps this could be made more clear were I to offer you two alternatives and ask you to choose.

First, you can be taken to a dusty clearing, where you will be forced to sleep on the bare ground beneath the open sky. You will be dressed in rags and given a single blanket. You will need to gather your own water from a trickle of a stream several miles distant, and for food you will be given some communal gruel, sufficient to keep you alive, if barely, supplemented by what ever you can find, mostly lichens, a few mushrooms and some lizards and bugs. When not sleeping, hauling water or eating, for about 16 hours a day, you will be expected to work in the mines, digging the old fashioned way with a manual pick, hauling the rubble up in a hand pushed cart.

The alternative is to be taken to a palace where hundreds of servants will wait on you.They will do their best to entertain you, but should they not meet your needs, they are authorized to bring in anyone you might wish, be it teacher, writer, singer, dancer, philosopher or other. Any good you can name will be yours, and you are free to travel wherever you wish, being housed at a home purchased there just for your visit. The only restriction upon your activities is that you are forbidden to work. You can engage in any activity, any hobby, but cannot do anything which is considered work. You can engage in hobbies, provided you are not paid and remain an amateur, but you must pass your time in idleness.

As should be obvious, these two represent the extremes of the two world views I have mentioned. However, while some will say I have unfairly stacked the deck, I beg to differ. These are, in all fairness, perfect embodiments of the two perspectives taken to absurd extremes. If one seems much better than the other, perhaps that says something about the relative merit of the two positions, but it does not mean the comparison is unfair.

So, having said that, which of the two would my readers choose? Would they pick the mines, rags and gruel, or luxurious idleness?  (I know some will complain that they value being self sufficient, and that I can understand, but that is not the issue here. In both cases, being fictional situations, the hypothetical individual is supported by others, and so self-sufficiency, respect, responsibility and the rest are not issues here.)

Obviously most readers would choose the palace over slave labor, and for obvious reasons. However, they may not be all that obvious, as many seem to be arguing that the mines are better than the palace. How else to explain protectionists who argue for preserving jobs over affordable foreign goods? Or labor unions who value more jobs over cheaper and more efficient production? In both cases, jobs is being made into the end, not the means, and this they are effectively declaring for the mines against the palace.

But rather than go on and on, let me draw this to a close. I have written so much on this (as shown in the postscript) that most questions anyone has can be answered by my earlier posts. I wanted only to make clear one final time the simple fact that consumption, while seen as unworthy, is still the end, with labor being but a means, and when making decisions we need to remember that.  But I think I have made that abundantly clear, and so I will end my post. Hopefully someone reading this has found a new way of looking at things. Even if I persuade no one, maybe I did at least manage to convince someone to question whether jobs are an end in themselves.

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* I could argue that choosing to live is actually a want rather than a need, and so the requirements of continued existence are simply the expression of a wish. However, as those who voluntarily commit suicide through inaction are both economically irrelevant and so short lived as to have no political or economic effect, I think it safe to act as if continue existence were a need rather than wish.

** Here you can see why I could argue wanting to live is a want not a need. If you define it thus, then we don't have a blurry dividing line between wants and needs, we have just a variety of different wants. And so it may be easiest if we do choose to define everything as a want.

*** It is possible to have a job doing something you enjoy. However, even in those cases, the requirement that you continue doing it for a set amount of time, that you do it on a fixed schedule, and the other burdens created by turning a hobby into work may make it more burdensome than enjoyable. So even among those who have a job doing something they would do for free, there are still only a very, very few who actually find their job completely free of discomfort.

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POSTSCRIPT

Most of the arguments made above have been covered before in my writing about protectionism and other anti-trade movements. Most notably, the question of the purpose of production, whether we produce to consume or consume to justify production, was handled in one way or another in my posts "Protectionism", "Fear of Trade", "Free Trade, Employment, Outsourcing, and Protectionism", "Cheap Lighters, Overseas Dumping and Monopolies", "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs", "Protectionism Right and Left", "Bad Economics Part 6", "Pro Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and "The Sky's Not Falling Part 2". It may also be beneficial to read "Has No One Heard Of Lord Say?" and "Bad Economics Part 14", as they also relate, in part, to this topic.